At our "Whit's End"

We were camping from last Wednesday to Sunday. It was "extreme" camping with monsoon rains and a nearby tornado. We made it through 2 nights of that stuff and settled in for some sun and fun. It's always fun, no matter what the weather. Like everything, it's what you make it! The company and food were great the whole time. Whit's End is a great campground. We will definitely make it a yearly trip. http://www.whitsendcampground.com/ If you go to the camp map check out site R15. It's river front and the owners were nice enough to let us put both our pop-ups on one site so we could actually camp WITH our friends. Very accomodating. Very big site, so we didn't feel squished, even with lots of kid stuff, bikes, clotheslines, shoes floating away, etc.

We were camping with our friends, Coreen and Steven and their 2 girls Amanda (11) and Lilyin (5). In our camper were me, Scott, Walker and Kaylee (11).

Coreen was so nice to send me the following pictures. Mine, of course won't be developed for another month or so. I still have to pick up the pictures from our first trip this year to Danforth Bay with Sue and Donnie and the kids. Those pictures will be coming soon.

Scott and Steven relaxing the first night.

Walker, Lilly, Amanda and Kaylee down the bank to the Bear Camp River. You could fall down this if you weren't careful. This was before the big flood. The water rose to just about 2 feet below the "cliff." They weren't able to get down there again.

Haning by the fire. Steven, Coreen with Walker, Kaylee with Lilly, me with Amanda. Scott took the picture. The tent in the background was our "changing room." After the first night there were a few puddles in there and we had to be careful where to put the luggage. Next time we get a camper we'll actually think about things like luggage and storage. Who wants to put up a tent with a camper. Pain in the neck. This was a very fun trip. Even if we were all very wet for a long time.

Rain rain, go away

It was such a great, clear, sunny, warm spring. Now we are into thunderstorms every day.

Scott bought a new shed and started building it yesterday. It was SOOOO hot. Helping was miserable, scorching heat and lots of sweat. That's hard work! We got almost half done and it started to rain, hard. We kept working, glad to be cool for a change. It's not easy to work in the pouring rain. But we kept it up until thunder and lightening were really close and I gave up. I didn't want to be struck. Scott came in too for a little bit. We got some clear weather for a while and went out again until the next T-storm. Today he should be good on his own. He's doing the roof and doors. Not that I don't like to help, but that's more his thing than mine.

The rain all week kept us inside a lot. Not easy now that we have an extra child. I thought (foolishly) that two kids would amuse each other and make my life easier. Not a chance. Even a very good one like Audrey is still difficult. She idolizes Walker, which works to her disadvantage. They bug the heck out of each other. I should have realized. A good play date lasts two hours maximum. Audrey is with us from 5:45AM until 3:30 PM. All I do is break up fights. Walker has been doing better, though. He'll just tell me he needs time to himself and goes up to play Webkinz world. They seem to do better if we are away from the house or outside. We're doing a lot of book reading, art projects and school work so they are both ready to return to school in the fall. Then in two weeks they both start dance classes, so that'll also give us something fun to do.

Walker is sleeping over Auntie Sue's tonight. I thought he was having Kaylee sleep here, but when he called I heard him ask if he could sleep over there. So that'll give me a little unexpected "free time." Maybe we can go out to a grown up restaurant tonight. Maybe we'll do some recording. Scott has figured out all his new audio recording equipment. We haven't really had a chance to use it yet, so tonight could be the night.




Here is my little friend Lily in the dressing room before her dance in show 6.


"Walking on Sunshine." Lily's sister Amanda, 2nd from right. They are the girls of my dear friend, Coreen. This was their competition tap piece.


Me and Amanda before show 6.


Here are some of the beautiful iris that bloomed on the patio. I love iris.

Last day of kindergarten. Tyler, Nolan, Walker and Gage. A little blurry, but hard to get the 4 of them to stay still!

Walker in the pool. We think we will use this picture for Walker's pool party invitation. Possibly another one as well.

6 Months Ago... Walker's Birthday Party

I finally got some pictures of Walker's birthday developed and scanned. The fun of using film! What a surprise it is when I finally get some pictures back. These are from Walker's birthday back in February, when he turned six. It was a fun party. It was a two-parter. The first part was Walker and all his friends for fun and games at the studio. After that party the big kids came back to the house for a sleepover. Check it out...


The morning of the big day - Scott and I gave Walker his new bike. He rode it in the house for about 3 weeks (it was still very wet and snowy outside back in February).


The party is just getting started with the "Walking Song." Gotta get everyone warmed up. Walker is in the red shirt next to his big-kid friend, Danny (in orange)


After the games we came into the party room (at the studio) for cake. Danny, Walker, Audrey.



At the studio, waiting for the other guests: Scott, Marie (Dad's friend), Walker, my mom.


Back at our house for party, party 2. The big boys played X-Box 360, Jonathan, Danny & Walker.


Later the four of them (these all stayed the night) wrote a play, then got costumes and make-up then we video taped it. I told Danny I'd put it on You-Tube. He was horrified. I wish I had the technology to do stuff like that. Here are Danny (long, dark hair), Kaylee (blond back of head), Amanda and Walker


Danny, Amanda, Kaylee and Walker in the bathroom, getting ready for their "show." Notice Walker's very red lips.

I feel much better now that this is up. Now I can move on to more current topics, like getting up at 5:30AM every day. More on that later.

Back to Work

This afternoon and tonight we're back at the theater with 2 more rehearsals. It's going to be a long night and difficult for Walker to get up tomorrow morning. But that's it for late Wednesdays now. Almost done. Exhilerating and exhausting at the same time. Rehearsals for both shows 6 and 7 tonight then for number 8 tomorrow and then it's a weekend of real, live audiences and then... DONE! Going to get my costume rack packed up and ready to go soon.

Walker and I are looking forward to our 2nd annual overnight trip to Worcester when this weekend is over. We go to visit my dad. Probably next Wednesday afternoon. This year Walker will have to skip a couple of days of school to do it, but travel is educational!

I finally got some film developed. Below are a couple of pictures. I have more to scan in, but why do it all at once.

Here are my friend, Coreen and her cutie, Amanda singing at the best karaoke place in town... my house. We can get anyone to the mic.

Walker and Scott coloring the hard boiled eggs we were going to use the next day for Walker's birthday party. They were for the egg on the spoon race. Walker really got into it. I know, these are old pictures, Walker's birthday was 3 months ago.

Obviously, the date on these pictures is wrong. This was NOT taken in 1998. I think I just hadn't redone the date after replacing the battery in the camera. Anyway, here is a typical picture of Walker watching TV. He LOVES his blue ball (actually has 2 of them). He's always balancing on them in some fashion. It's a very good all over muscle work-out. No wonder he's so strong. I should do his work-out!

1st Weekend of Shows

We're done with the first 4 shows. It was fun. Walker was wonderful in his role as Toto in Wizard of Od. He's done now. I've still got 4 more shows. All my little kid classes are done too, so now I only have to deal with me and my costumes. Almost over. We're looking forward to summer classes - and other summer fun too!

We're going to the Memorial Day parade in town. Later we're meeting up with Sue and the kids to go to the cemetary with Mom. We always plant fresh annuals on her family plot.

Happy Memorial Day!


Here is my 3 & 4 year old class, my youngest class at Steppin Out. They are all ready to go on stage for their tap dance. From left: Brooke, Mackenzie, Grace (whose mom gave me this picture) Leah P., Ava, Leah T., Kylie. They are really cute and did a great job with both tap and ballet.

Tomorrow's the big show...

We're halfway done with our dress rehearsals. 4 down, 4 to go next week. Tomorrow starts our weekend of 4 shows. It's very exciting. Walker is dancing with the adult jazz company. He's been so good all week. It's long and tiring. The glamorous part is for about 2 minutes when you are on stage. The rest is hurry up and wait. Walker has been a real trooper with all the late nights and waiting and changing and sitting still and listening and following directions. Tomorrow is his glory day. He's got friends coming to see him in the first show-the one with 3 of his dances.

I took some pictures on my cell phone this afternoon of some of my little girls. I hope to get them here later in the weekend.

Walker was supposed to have a t-ball game at 9 tomorrow morning then go do the 2 shows, but he wisely said he thought he had enough to do. Hey, it's only t-ball, not like he's letting down his team or anything. Dancing on stage is way more exciting to both of us anyway.

We're still waiting for some good, long rain, but ever since Scott put in all those trees it's rained for about 4 minutes every day. Not enough.

Happy Memorial Weekend!~



Looking forward to July... Here is our campsite for our 1st trip of the season to Danforth Bay with Sue and Donnie and the kids. Looks nice. Wooded. It's across from the beach and a small stream runs between ours and Sue's sites. Can't wait!

Busy Season

The first weekend of shows is over now. Only two more fun, busy weeks to go. Walker is doing great! He's got some good stamina for hanging out backstage and staying up late. It's much easier this year now that he's older. He's able to hang out with the other teacher's kids back stage and wander around the theater with them instead of just having to be in my sight all the time. Makes it easier on both of us. Luckily, Danny is there and that makes it all super fun for Walker.

Unfortunately, with all this recital stuff going on Walker has had to miss a lot of T-Ball practices. We've so far been able to make the games. That makes us look lame, but they know where we are, so it's OK. It's hard to "do it all."

I can finally talk about Auntie Jeanne and Uncle Buddy's 50th anniversary. It was really fun. I almost mentioned it a couple of times, but I know Jeanne reads here, so I didn't want to ruin the surprise. What a great celebration! I loved Bill's movie!

Walker is ready for summer vacation. We made a paper chain of how many school days were left. Each day we rip one off. He's down to just 20 more school days.

Scott is really busy with outdoor work. We've got a lot of wood to stack in the basement (once we get it in). He's also done a lot of planting around the yard. He dug a trench and put in edging and mulch all around the house. It looks really nice and was a lot of work. But it'll be worth it in how much easier it is to mow around now. It'll be a lot less week whapping.

Hopefully, the weather will start to get even warmer and we can get the pool water temp up. Walker's been in twice now, but it's only about 60! Brr!!

Walker's class hatched chicks a few weeks ago. This picture was sent home by his teacher, Mrs. Paul. I love the look on his face and how fascinated he and Gage are.

The kindergarten class also hatched a duck. They had one BIG egg and couldn't wait to see what was in it. Here is the duckling. All the babies ended up on someone's farm.

This great picture is from the Christmas show. It was taken and given to me by a wonderful photographer, Allie Burke. She is the official Steppin' Out photographer. I finally got it scanned in. Walker and I have an appointment with her for dance pictures. I wasn't going to do it, but then I noticed we have matching blue and turquoise costumes so what the heck. There goes our economic stimulous check! If they come out good I'll put them here.

Back to the Beach

The weather has been so nice we were back at the beach last week. Walker and I love going to the beach. We especially like walking on the jette. Can't wait for summer when we can do the fun stuff more often.




Here is Walker at the Hampton Beach State Park. You can barely see him amongst the boulders.



We had a picnic on a flat rock here at Hampton.


Walker and a friend in their hip-hop costumes. This is for his Tuesday class. They are dancing to "Move it Like This" by the Baha Men. It's really cute. There are about 14 girls and 4 boys in this class.

We're gearing up for recitals. This is the last week of regular classes at both my studios. This weekend we've got the Andover rehearsal on Saturday and the 3 recitals on Sunday. Next week is we've got Steppin' Out rehearsals every day and 4 shows the next weekend. We repeat that the week after and we're looking at 3 weeks of shows. Hope I don't get a cold sore now!

Walker has two more loose teeth. The tooth fairy should be coming in the next month or so. He's going to be rich. Between that and all the house cleaning he's doing he's making lots of money. I've decided to put half of what he makes right into his bank account. Otherwise he just spends it on snack food at the studio (the new cafe is making the big bucks).

We've got money down and confirmation of dates for two camping trips. Both are in July. The first is at Danforth Bay with Sue and the family. The other at Whit's End with Coreen and her family. We're looking forward to lots of fun!

Goodbye Grandma

Glory Nason
November 29, 1917 - May 6, 2008

Scott's grandmother died this morning at about 1:30AM. She was in Exeter Hospital. There was no real diagnosis. She was just getting very old, weak, frail. She's been fragile for quite a while but got much worse in the past two weeks while she was in the hospital. She will be missed. We loved her.

Spring Has Sprung

The weather has been great! I finally felt comfortable in washing and putting away the winter coats and snow pants. Hooray. The daffodils are finally out, so it must be spring. We've been keeping busy with lots of outdoor activities.



Walker and Gage at the "lake." It's really just a big puddle of water caused by the melting of the snow and lots of rain in March. It's out on the power lines on our woods trail. They loved throwing things in. They were trying to make a bridge. Too bad the sticks they threw in just floated away.


Walker on the monkey rings at Stepping Stones Playground. He can still get across. He worked so hard on this last year. This year it was a breeze, even his first try. He's got very good upper body strength. More than me!


You know it's spring when Scott breaks out the yard vac. Why rake up the leaves when you can vacuum them up?! This is a great rig.


Walker on the tree swing. He'd been running through the sprinkler. Warm enough for him to do that, but not me. I don't really like super-cold water.


"Boogie Back to Texas" adult tap company from Steppin' Out. I'm middle row, 3rd from right. This was taken a few minutes before we went on stage at the Gotta Dance competition. Have I mentioned we took home a platinum award?

Lost a Tooth!

Walker lost his very first tooth Saturday morning. He was so excited. It's been very loose for about a week and bothering him. Of course it came out while I wasn't home. I was at competition. But he told me all about it on the phone. We put it in a cup next to the bed with a big sign on it so the tooth fairy could find it. She came! She left a $2.00. Cool.


He looks so different now. Especially when he's not making a silly face.


A whole new smile. We've entered "big kid" world now.

Competition went well for our studio as a whole. My tap company (I refer to it as the "Go Mom" group) won platinum for our dance "Boogie Back to Texas." Unfortunately, a woman who dances with us, who is also a teacher at another studio, STOLE the choreography and put it on her own students who also competed in the same competition. What a looser! I don't know how she'll be able to show her face there on Thursday. We'll see what happens. Anyway, adult jazz company also got a platinum award for "Wizard of Odd." I'm a lion in that one. It was fun and now performing is over for a few weeks until recital time.

Lost a Tooth!

2 Days Til Competition

The 1st dance competition for Steppin' Out will be held this Saturday. It's an exciting time at the studio. Are we all ready? Of course. If not, well, it'll be over in a few days. I'm always excited to hear what the judges have to say, so classes will be interesting next week with their comments. It'll be busy on Saturday for me. I'm teaching my first 4 classes at Andover. I got a sub for the last class, so I'll be able to get to the competition venue early. I want plenty of time to apply those false eyelashes.

In other dance news, Walker will be dancing the role of Toto in the "Wizard of Odd" in the May recitals. He's very excited about that. At first the thought was that we'd be using a stuffed dog. But a real, live kid is even better. Another child will be doing it this weekend in competition, though. But Walker will be in 3 or 4 shows in May. The dog costume is very cute.

I was excited to finally be able to make reservations at Whit's End Camping Area. Unfortunately, the sites we really, really wanted are booked for the entire summer. Darn. I thought calling at 8:30AM on the first day they are open for reservations would guarantee us what we want. What I didn't know is that people book a year in advance. So now I know. When we leave there this summer we'll reserve the best sites for next summer. Ah, planning 2009 already. Something to look forward to. We did get river sites, but they are a little "cliffy." We were there last year and enjoyed it, but still, I really wanted the nice, flat beach sites. Oh well. I guess as long as there is water nearby we'll be OK. Our favorite sites are waterfront, so we'll be happy. Early morning fishing, right off your front doorstep. This trip will begin on Wednesday, July 23. We've got 4 nights booked.

We still had snow on the ground on the first day of spring. Below are some pictures of Walker celebrating.

Daffodils popping up.

Still got snow.

We were excited when a few days after the first day of spring it snowed again. There was enough snow to cancel school last Friday. Here we are playing out in it. We really did get a lot of snow!

When you shake a tree, lots of snow falls down onto your head.

We finally used our new snowman kit (new, bought back in November).

Scott likes plowing so much he even plowed his old tractor. No seriously, he was pushing it into the garage to change it's tires. Walker and I thought it was a funny sight.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

We woke up to find we'd had a visit from leprechans! They scattered "leprechan gold" all over the house. They also caused quite a bit of mischief by overturning chairs and putting things where they didn't belong. They left M&Ms too. Quite exciting to find on a Monday morning before school.

Walker, this morning ready to celebrate St. Patrick's Day. The leprechans left him this hat,

We held our 3rd annual Easter Egg coloring event last weekend. Walker and Kaylee love it!

Marching Toward Spring

Scott, Walker, Kaylee and I started a bunch of seeds in the greenhouse. You know spring is coming soon when we start that! We each picked out 2 packs of seeds we wanted at Agway last Sunday. No sprouts yet. We need a new space heater for the greenhouse. The old one is broken and it's been very chilly.

Here are a few pictures Coreen sent me from last summer's camping trip to Eastern Slope. I've got to get them off my desktop (where I keep them until I use them here so as not to forget).

Me and Jonathan at Coreen's site. Our camper is in the background. Corona Light in the foreground.

Sue, Lilly, Me, Steven and Tasha in the Saco River in North Conway. The water was crystal clear and very cold, even in August. Tasha really is wearing a bathing suit even though it doesn't look it. There have been a lot of questions about that.

Steven and Scott working on their tie-dye projects. Who knew tie-dye would be such a big hit with the adults in the group. We scavenged through all our stuff for anything that we could use: sports bras, socks, washcloths, shorts.

Mandy working on her project, Tommy in the blue and red and Walker's bare belly in the background.

Have I mentioned that I like camping?

March - In Like a Lion

Happy March! Spring is just around the corner. I'm so glad we had a storm on March 1. Doesn't that mean the weather should be calm, warm and beautiful toward the end of the month? Scott says the farmer's almanac predicts another 12 storms this year. Bring it on! I need a few more snow days.


Walker was able to get out and ride his new birthday bike in the driveway on Friday afternoon. He loves it. It's much bigger than his old bike, so he's getting used to it. He was riding it in the house all week so it was nice to finally get it outside.


Walker on the new bike. His coat even matches.


Walker and Scott snuggled up Friday night.


This is how Walker drinks hot chocolate - he uses a spoon.


Kaylee and Walker making brownies.


Kaylee eating the brownie batter.